Magdalen Island penny token

This token was issued in 1815 by Sir Isaac Coffin, who was granted the island by the British government in reward for his loyalty to the crown during the American Revolutionary War.

While not a rare coin, it is hard to find in anything but worn condition, and even prices for pieces in the lowest grades tend to start at about at about C$100 and go up rapidly from there.

Îles de la Madeleine) form a small archipelago in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence with a land area of 205.53 square kilometers (79.36 sq mi).

An example of the Magdalen Island penny token is first mentioned in a catalog compiled by Thomas Sharp of the collection of Sir George Chetwynd.

"[9] He returned to this subject in a later article published in "The Canadian Antiquarian and Numismatic Journal", where he discovered that the production of the token was described in the memoirs of Sir Edward Thomason, who said that he undertook the following work during 1815: I had manufactured this year a large quantity of tokens for Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin, Bart., who is the sole possessor and king, as he called himself, of the Magdalen islands, situated in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, in North America.

...as soon as a large quantity of these were struck off, Sir Isaac sailed off with them, packed up in casks, and took with him a powerful coining press and machinery, and dies ready engraved, to establish what he called a little mint for his subjects, to manufacture their coin for the future...[10]McLachlan noted that no specimen of this half-pence token described by Thomason had come to light, and suggested that Thomason mis-remembered having struck them for Isaac.

[7] These two examples have not subsequently resurfaced, and the sale catalog was criticized the following year in an American coin collector's magazine for its extensive typographical errors.

[12] More modern studies of the token find that it is rare in Fine condition or better,[13] and that uncirculated business strikes are rarer than the few proofs that were minted.